Olympic Times - Sports Daily

Traffic to the 2010 Winter Olympics website stayed at 10 times its normal levels Friday as tickets to the Games went on sale for the first day.
Organizers wouldn’t release the number of applications they received for tickets, but said people were making the requests as well as just looking for information.
When sales began early Friday morning, organizers said they saw a massive spike in activity, but it levelled off by the end of the day.
“We had about 30 times our normal volume when we turned it on first thing this morning,” said Caley Denton, the Vancouver Olympic committee’s vice-president of ticketing and consumer marketing.
Demand for the estimated 1.6 million tickets publicly available tickets was steady from all across Canada, he said.
Sales around the world are managed by the various national Olympic committees, many of whom have contracted out the process to agents.
For the United States, Australia and the European Union, sales are being handled by a company called CoSport, which with its sister company JetSet are the official suppliers of hospitality packages to the Olympics.

An operator who answered the phone at CoSport late Friday said the company was busy, but provided no details about the number of sales in the U.S.
Canadians who grumble about not being able to afford 2010 tickets should take heart.
Prices worldwide are much higher than they are for Canadians because agents are allowed to mark up tickets as much as 20 per cent.
For example, a U.S. buyer hoping for the best gold-medal men’s hockey ticket will pay more than C$1,000. An Australian will pay around C$936, while in the European Union, the ticket costs about C$948.
The highest price for Canadians for that same ticket is $775.
Fans outside Canada also don’t have access to the lowest-priced tickets for marquee events. That’s because the cheapest seats at hockey, figure skating and the ceremonies are being held for the homegrown crowd, organizers said.
Bundled tickets called “Olympic Experience Packages” also aren’t available outside of Canada, although CoSport will offer packages that include accommodations and tickets to multiple events.
Some of those packages will also be available to Canadians, and according to the CoSport website, they are sold on a first-come, first-serve basis, unlike individual ticket sales.
For those, organizers have established a five-week process designed to give would-be spectators ample time to make choices.
The process was also designed to thwart scalpers trying to snap up tickets to the best events before anyone else had a chance to even whip out a credit card.
“We did a lot of load testing on the site,” Denton said of the five years of planning that preceded the launch at midnight Pacific time.
“We knew we would get high volume but at the same time we did a lot of testing to make sure we could handle it, and it is going as planned.”
The organizing committee will accept applications until Nov. 7. Tickets will be allocated after that.
If there is more demand for an event than there are seats, a lottery will be held and winners will be notified late next month or early in December.

from: canadianpress.google.com

italia blog